5 Ways to Market Online Course and Increase Sales

5 ways to market online course and increase sales intro

As you’ve probably seen many times before, online courses are everywhere. This may have caused you to already create yours and now you’re thinking about how to market it. As you well know, content is very important but without proper marketing, it won’t be enough.

In today’s article, we will give you an explanation of 5 ways to do so and increase your sales. We will mention several tools as well as tips for repurposing your content.

Let’s begin.

Create a YouTube Channel

Let’s start with the most famous multimedia space, YouTube. But do not worry, we are talking of making a channel for marketing, not for your content creating alone. That is very different, though you can mix both in a clever way.

First, if you want to turn it into only a purely marketing channel, there are some things to know:

• Traffic is vital, so trendy/attractive topics are important.
  
• The format must be short, and eye-catching.
  
• Consistency is also crucial, there is always a lot of content online, you got to keep up to be visible.
  

Now as for a brief way to mix content creation and marketing so that your mainstream remains your course, think of this:

• You can use YouTube as an “appetizer” or as an outline. Say that there is a topic that you got a course about, instead of transposing it all into YouTube, just give a brief overview with incentives to check your course.
  
• You don’t even have to give a brief overview of your content, you can go with the flow of what is popular. For example, consider that for some reason a topic that you got a course about gets new attention. Address whatever they are discussing as you will, maybe even reporting, only make sure to drop your “I got a course about that, check it out”.

Create a Blog and Promote Your Course There

Another alternative is to promote your course using texts as your main tools. This most likely is going to happen in blogs, so let’s talk about them.

“How exactly can I do this?” Well, a similar logic as the one with YouTube applies. Pure marketing is possible as well, but perhaps it is better to do some mixing here too.

Besides doing the outlining and/or taking advantage of what’s trending, you could do more. One good idea is to use the site as a place for posting “bits” of your course rather than an overview. For example, if you got one course about gardening without fertilizers, why not taking its first part and mention some of it on the blog? Or you could talk about why is that topic important or why did you decide to make the course.

This brings me to the last point, blogging offers you a great space of personal communication. While in your course you cannot use 10 minutes only to speak about your motivation/views. You can definitely do it on your blog! You might as well get an audience for your personality/criteria besides for your knowledge/skills. That’s a double prize that you cannot ignore.

Build an Email List

Emailing is great from various places you see it. First, it gives you a short space to create content. Second, that space can be used as a great method of updating, reporting, and of course marketing! Third, all of this without losing an attractive personal touch and at considerably less effort than blogging.

We won’t repeat ourselves too much, so bear in mind that the same logic/concepts as with the other 2 sections apply here as well. Isn’t that fantastic!

One major difference is the expected length and ways to direct this to your course. For example, in a blog, you got to elaborate quite a lot to get to the promotion part (i.e., click here for…). However, using email, you can write a few lines (even with the same content) and directly drop a call for action.

Having said that, you then may be asking yourself, “ok but how do I build a list”? Certainly, there is no clear way to do this, largely because in comparison to others, this method cannot exist by itself. Meaning, you have to count with a site where people decided to give you their email. If you don’t want to be reported as spam, there is no other way around it.

But do not worry, we’ve discussed 2 methods already and they can be your path to get those emails.

Create a Free E-Book with a Mini-Course

Now as for the more intensive content creation options, we got eBooks. Thankfully, since the idea is to make a mini-course, you’ll be quite familiar with what to do. Besides, it functions similarly to the “bits” parts of blogging or the overview on our YouTube part.

Of course, that there are significant differences, especially the fact that you have to make more content. eBooks are indeed intended to be longer than any other format we’ve mentioned. But the key aspect of its length is to find a balance. Not too long to lose the option to market the big course, not too short to not provide enough insight and value to capture the audience.

Lastly, though we don’t have enough space to go into detail, let me encourage you to check common best practices.

Repurpose Your E-Book into a Podcast and a Webinar

One of the best things that you would get if you decided to opt for the eBook way is its great potential. Since you got a large portion of your course in a detailed and accessible format, you can use it in many other places with ease.

For example, if you think of podcasts, a lot of it will have to do with underlining and rephrasing your materials. Or in webinars, you’ll be basically presenting your book, which is as simple as that!

Well, of course, that you cannot simply read from the ebook, and that you have be aware of what is good in that format. Still, it is not inconceivable that it won’t turn out to be very tough.

Lastly, these 2 formats can also be used to market more of your content. Thus, you got a great feedback loop that must be cherished.

Conclusion of 5 Ways to Market Online Course and Increase Sales

Options to market and (re)utilize your content are many and varied. Some offer higher flexibility and diversity of use, while others are easier but maybe more restricted. What is very clear is that the repertoire is right available to you and with some knowledge- like the one in here - you will take advantage of it without a doubt.

Thank you so much for reading this article, we expect it to have been helpful.

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